The Metlay Manifesto (everyone hit 'n' *yawn*)
metlay
Murphy moves in mysterious ways.
I got in today to remote-login from Tennessee to my machine in Pittsburgh
before the high-load hours began, and the first article I ran into on
rec.music.synth was Jon Deutsch's attack. Well, I just about lost it right
then and there, folx. Being separated from my life, my friends, my studio
and my bride-to-be is hard enough without the one community I can turn to
even here (my Net friends) suddenly turning on me. Rant, rave, foam, shriek.
Tappity tappity tap.... My followup, one of the most blistering pieces I
have ever written for the Net, grew and grew. Defenses of my opinions!
Calls for support from my REAL friends! Slander of Mr. Deutsch and of his
D-10! And on and on, over two hundred lines of raw, oozing bile....
And then my TELNET connection quit, and I lost it all.
Never use a text editor remotely, Metlay, I sez to myself, sez I. Never.
Well, I stared at the "No route to host" message for a few minutes, letting
my blood pressure drop, and then realized it was just after 9 AM and time to
get to work, so I waited until after 5 to reconnect. This time, I read ahead
first, and read all of the followup posts, as well as the postscripts
Jon's editor had accidentally deleted. I then laughed like an idiot for a
minute or two, and started typing this post instead.
First off, I'd like to thank everyone who followed up on this post; your
opinions, good or otherwise, mean a lot to me, and while I'm stuck 600
miles from the only thing that I love more than music (my fiancee, not
my music magazine collection, dammit), you gave me a much needed boost.
But let my posting here wrap things up, before the rest of the Net gets
sick of all the bandwidth devoted to mutual backslapping and jokecracking.
There are some real points below; let's get off me and onto them, okay?
Jon, I'll take your diatribe in the spirit in which it was meant, and give
you a serious answer to your one serious point, the PPS about people beating
on the D's. I do not, for the record, consider them worthless. I know for
a fact that I could make worthwhile noises on a D-10, if it was what I had
to work with; Dean Swan owns and uses a D-110 to great effect, as does
Nick Rothwell. The essential part of using the D series well, in my opinion,
is to realize that it was never meant to be a sample player; the PCM partials
were meant to add interesting transients to the synth partials, for the most
part. (We'll ignore gimmicky loops like Digital Native Dance.....) If you
look at it as a straightforward analog-style synth with some added features
and program it with that mindset, you can do some nice things with it. In
other words, take a purist's approach rather than trying to force-fit a weak
synth sound and a PCM partial together to cobble up something that works.
I'd also recommend dropping a line to Dean Swan; his philosophy on the D-110
is different from mine, and centers around creating interesting drum timbres
with the surprisingly powerful tools the machine gives you.
As for the rest of your post, well, my rebuttal sounded better coming from
David than it would from me. Nobody's afraid of me, except maybe Kurt Geisel,
and that's probably only because we've met face to face and this puss would
scare Freddy Krueger. |-> I've been doing this digital-bashing routine on
rec.music.synth for years, and most people (yourself included, perhaps, given
your PSes) know the joke by now...even Brett, who knows damn well that my
preference for analog hasn't kept me from learning about digital. (BTW, Brett:
I don't have to "prove" ANYTHING. *I* own two XPANDERS. So THERE! |-P ) On
the other hand, there may be people out there who are new to the joke, and
it does have some basis in serious matters other than my preference for
analog dinosaurs, so I'll take a moment on that topic if you don't mind.
The two reasons why I tend to really hammer on the Roland L/A synthesizers in
general, the D-50 as well as the "baby D's" (which are not so much lacking
in power as different in intent, I believe) are (1) because I view, and have
always viewed, L/A synthesis as being a bastard offspring of two other types
of synthesis, sample playback and straight analog, and (2) because I view the
entire aim of the L/A line as being, well, "unhealthy," in much the same way
as I view the Korg M1 and TY series, the Proteus, the Roland U series, and
the recent developments at Yamaha and Ensoniq, to be "unhealthy." They all
represent a creeping change in the way the music industry views synthesizers,
and in how it views its public. And in turn, how the community views itself.
More on this in a moment.
To elaborate on Point 1 a bit more: in e-music, my own creative tendency
has always been toward instruments that feature "pure" synthesis architecture
(i.e. a sample player should only be a sample player, an analog synth should
only be an analog synth, etc.) It makes each instrument conceptually easy
to program and use for what strengths a given architecture can provide; my
analog synthesizers are Xpanders, and my primary wavetable synth is a Prophet
VS, because these represent the ultimate power in their respective genres.
I recognize the limitations of less expensive machines in these genres, and
grow frustrated with them very quickly (ever wonder why I don't own a
sampler? To a certain extent, it's because I can't afford a Fairlight III,
and why bother with anything less? Before all the happy sampler owners out
there jump down my gullet, let me say that I have more sensible reasons as
well, but they'll wait for another post. ). The problem with the D series
is that they are neither good synthesizers nor good sample players nor good
digital effects processors, but a mishmash of several devices, uninspiring
by themselves, in one nice slick package.
"And what's wrong with that," I hear many people out there cry. "As long as
the end result is a pleasing sound, who cares how it's done?" To which I
reply: I do. If you don't, that's fine; go make music and be happy. But I
find that I do care about what goes into a synthesizer, and what goes into
the philosophy behind a syntheizer, and I find that a lot of the newest
generation of instruments are disturbing to me in fundamental ways. Which
brings me to point 2....
Those of you who have been with me on this Net for awhile will remember the
days of yore, when all of my vitriol was poured out upon one type of synth,
and only one: the Yamaha DX and TX series. FM. FM! Boo, hiss, pfaugh!
Well, no more. I hereby withdraw my objections to FM, and label them past
history. In fact, I've just gotten a phone call from the guy I'm staying
with, saying the UPS just delivered the FM synth I've recently purchased.
(I can hear the hearts stopping from here to Edinburgh. Nick spits up his
popcorn in a fine spray all over the CRT, sputtering, "WHAT?" Jun sinks
weakly back into his seat, muttering, "But I was KIDDING!" Dean, privy to
the purchase, says, "Aw, c'mon, THAT doesn't COUNT!" To which I say, FM
is FM, Yamaha or otherwise. So there. |-P Besides, I might still get a
DX7IIFD with an E! board in it some day, for some REAL FM power....)
Why this change of heart? Because FM is passe'. "That's a stupid reason to buy
a synth," you say. "It smacks of avantgardism, of being different just for the
sake of flouting fashion." True; let me qualify my statement. I turn to FM as
it has become passe' after seven years of use in the world music community,
and in the process it has fallen into the hands of people who want to stretch
its limits...the people with whom it started.
FM started and has ended in the hands of visionaries. It was originally
the province of massive digital synths, and now it is the province of FM
explorers in university music labs. But FM synths were fashionable for a
number of years, and everyone who was anyone used the damn things. They
all sounded the same. They were boring. They were... hell, I'll tell you
all what they were! They were what the newest generation of synths is now,
with a few notable exceptions: they were Black Boxes. Press a key, and
the Black Box makes a sound. Press two keys, change the the program, and
the Black Box makes a (slightly) different sound. No fuss, no bother...
and no creativity, no originality, no thought. It is the legacy of the
first programmable synthesizer, the deathknell of the modular Moog; you
can save the good sounds and get them back. So why make more?
For the record, this state of affairs is not Yamaha's fault. In 1983, we
were already starting to see the symptoms. Sequential reported that Prophets
were coming back to the factory with their presets unchanged. Korg introduced
the Poly-61, a killer machine at an unbeatable price because it did away
with user interface hardware (which nobody used anyway). Yamaha was already
making waves with the GS-1 and GS-2, preset synths featuring a sparkling new
form of synthesis that sounded like nothing else, and people were itching to
have something REALLY NEW in their stacks, not just another dreary analog
synth (the Juno-60, the OB-Xa, the SX-210 ("Kawai making a SYNTH? HAH!"), the
Poly-61, the CS-70M, the Prophet-5....) The DX7 brought it all together.
It was new, it sounded different, it was cheap, and it was almost impossible
to program, or so it must have seemed at first to the analog folks who tried.
A whole new market of people hungry for non-"synthish" sounds leaped on the
bandwagon , replacing out-of-tune grands and heavy Rhodes and Hammond stacks
with a DX7. And so what if it wasn't perfect....
The trend was set. Other manufacturers tried to cash in on Yamaha's success,
with wavetables (Korg's not PPG's...big difference), phase distortion (Casio),
sampling for the masses (the Mellotron is dead, long live the Mirage, as one
music magazine wrote) and a anumber of other ideas...and the synth playing
public lapped it up and screamed for more. But there was another trend that
was set as well; it was obvious to the manufacturers that nobody (well, nobody
really important, anyway) cared if the instruments themselves were hard, or
even impossible, to program from scratch. So they began to scale back user
interfacing, and pack more and more neat features into their Black Boxes as
memory and computing power became cheaper. The synths of the Eighties did
more, with less input from the user, than ever before. And no one cared.
But as the initial surge of new technology ran dry and the public, easily
jaded and bored now by the constantly changing synthesis technology of the
decade, screamed ever louder for MORE AND BIGGER AND NEW, the manufacturers
have become desperate. They graft old synth ideas together and give them
catchy new names. They add a few modulation routings that no one else has
and call it a "new era" in synthesis. They give more and more presets and
more and more waveforms to a public that's constantly, impotently searching
for ways to sound "new and different," and they are amazed at how fast
their newest Black Boxes become old hat. And the public still screams for
more, not really knowing any longer what it's screaming for.
A few companies attempt to buck the trends, only to have their efforts
killed in the cradle by poor planning, or bad luck, or random chance. In
the rising tide of mediocre synthesis, the Xpander vanishes because its
parents can't make copies of it cheaply enough, the VS dies because its
parent company overextends itself on a concept that would've flown two
years later, the MicroWave appears and is instantly suspect because its
creators weren't smart enough to give it the right kinds of presets, and
the WS will appear and perhaps no one will care. Or, God help us, they'll
have figured out a way to turn a Vector synth into another Black Box.
And what of FM? Oh, it's alive and well, sort of. Yamaha's shovelled it
into a new Black Box with a sample player and a sequencer and some signal
processors and tacked on a few new "features" while removing some vital
old ones (the SY77 has no fractional scaling!), and oh, boy, it's going out
the door like GANGBUSTERS and will until they release the next Black Box,
which will do newer and cuter things for half the price. And the public will
shell out more bucks for the new gear, and sell the old stuff at a loss
to people who were smart enough to wait, and feel somehow gypped. And the
old DX7's sit in the universities, where people who have finally learned
what they can do coax frightening, ethereal, powerful new sounds from them
and make them do things that no one had thought of in 1983. And I've heard
what they're doing, and I'm intrigued enough to give it a try myself, to
push FM beyond bells and electric pianos. Sure, it isn't an Alles, but it's
affordable and powerful if you learn to use it instead of wanking with it for
a while and then turning to a new Black Box.
I have developed patience in this field. I tried out the DX7 when it first
came out, and have worked with FM quite a lot since then, in group projects.
But an FM synth has never been heard in any song with my name on it, and
may never. I rejected them in 1983 because they did not suit my needs and
wants as a synthesist. People at the time looked very strangely at me, and
made the "bad luck go a way syn" and whispered, "You don't like FM?!" I
began to bait them for fun, and soon after that I entered graduate school,
got on the Net, and began baiting them nationwide. And as the trendy thing
to do shifts from FM to sampling to digital soup-stirring to crazy-quilt
collages of mismatched synthesis ideas wedged into one case with an OS
that (sometimes) holds it all together, I continually snipe at the trendy
thing to do, because you're sure as hell not going to hear a voice espousing
caution anywhere else in the industry!
I let people make music as they see fit, but I try to make them THINK about
how they do it. Too much, we see the trend of 1984-style doublespeak ads
taking hold in our chosen field of endeavour:
"Don't accept the mumbo-jumbo claims of other manufacturers of so-called
'Music Workstations!' Only WE give you the power to to free yourself of
worries about technology and snarls of cables, and get down to what
REALLY matters: making music. And after all, isn't that what it's all about?"
(Translation: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.")
I prefer to get people's bile up once in a while and to get them to do
more than ooh and ahh over the latest sounds or accept at face value
the statement that this year's Black Box is better than last year's model.
And most people smile as I do it, which is okay too. Anyone can make good,
interesting and worthwhile music with the gear they own. Some people choose
to let the instrument handle the tasks of selecting what sounds are used
and how they are allocated. Others prefer to dig more deeply into the sounds
themselves, and those people often have trouble explaining why (witness the
recent spate of attacks on Jack Zucker for his opinions). There's room for
everyone, and you all will just have to forgive me for speaking my views
loudly in this forum. At least here, there's a chance someone will listen,
and maybe learn something.
How I DO ramble on. *sigh* Well, my dinner's waiting, and so's my new
FM synth. See you all on Monday.
--
metlay | "There's more to life than synthesizers,
| sex, and Traveller. What, I don't know."
mpm...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (or) |
met...@vms.cis.pitt.edu | zrgynl
SCHABTACH ADAM
rant (and enjoyed it greatly, as usual).
I have only one question (which I suspect I share with a number of the
faithful disciples out here in Netland):
WHAT is this mysterious FM synth that has found its way into your sweaty
grasp, so close on the heels of the exhalted VS?
Inquiring minds etc...
--Adam scha...@spot.colorado.edu
>>>>> KILL YOUR TELEVISION <<<<<
Nick Rothwell
long and lyrical article (hey, I'm not paid to do this y'know?),
I thought I'd comment in a little more detail on one or two things
which have been bothering me for a while, but which Mike's posting
have clarified a bit.
>Dean Swan owns and uses a D-110 to great effect, as does
>Nick Rothwell.
A statement of great faith here, since Metlay hasn't heard any of
my music yet (although some poor unfortunate folks on BITNET have
had access to a piece I hacked up one week...).
The D-110 has shortcomings, like a lack of any decent modulation
facilities. It also has great strengths, such as lots of envelopes and
partials, and a good multitimbral operation. I use the D-110 almost
exclusively for sequences (tuned as well as percussion), since I have
some "real synths" for leads, pads and so on.
>The two reasons why I tend to really hammer on the Roland L/A synthesizers in
>general, the D-50 as well as the "baby D's" (which are not so much lacking
>in power as different in intent, I believe) are (1) because I view, and have
>always viewed, L/A synthesis as being a bastard offspring of two other types
>of synthesis, sample playback and straight analog
A fine view in principle; however, I find in practice that the
combination of a reasonable choice of otherwise mediocre components
works very well in the D-50. Sure, you could take a couple of Juno,
two chorus units and a reverb and do the same kind of thing, but
something about the combined package of "wimpy" components makes a
machine which is good for pads and atmospherics without being too rich
and overpowering. Synthesis isn't reductionistic, I've found (anyone
who's used a Juno-106 knows this). Conversely, my MKS-70 is difficult
to use sometimes because the sound is too thick for some musical
contexts.
>(ever wonder why I don't own a
>sampler? To a certain extent, it's because I can't afford a Fairlight III,
>and why bother with anything less? Before all the happy sampler owners out
>there jump down my gullet, let me say that I have more sensible reasons as
>well, but they'll wait for another post. ).
Same here; at one stage I was tempted to get hold of a cheap
basic sampler like an S-10; that way it would always be a sampling
add-on to what I've got, and treated as such. The other option could
only be a serious top-notch sampling machine which would give me
as much flexibility in the sampling domain as I get in the synthesis
domain from the D-50, MKS-70 and Matrix-6.
>"And what's wrong with that," I hear many people out there cry. "As long as
>the end result is a pleasing sound, who cares how it's done?" To which I
>reply: I do. If you don't, that's fine; go make music and be happy. But I
>find that I do care about what goes into a synthesizer, and what goes into
>the philosophy behind a syntheizer,
Aha. Now this is what I was trying to put my finger on. Hence my
indecision between the Waldorf MicroWave and the Ensoniq VFX. The
MicroWave is more of a "real synth", with a nice voice architecture,
loadable wavetables (in principle, anyway) and wonderful analogue
filtering. Those metallic/analogue wavetable sweeps make my mouth
water just thinking of them, I'd love one, but I can't really justify
it. The VFX is a more "sensible choice". We'll need two keyboard rigs
for (pending/possible) concerts later in the year, and a VFX looks
like being an excellent performance/master keyboard. It can make
impressive animated sounds, and has wavetable modulation, even though
it doesn't have terribly exciting filtering. A more prominent point is
that I'd quite like it as a stand-alone device to work on musical
ideas in peace without the computer and sequencer going and the other
units powered on (there are lessons of discipline to be learned here;
more later, perhaps); besides, the amount of heat which comes off my
gear when it's all powered on is quite amazing.
This makes the VFX the logical choice. I'd like the MicroWave
architecture, but I'm sure I can make do with the MKS-70 for
a lot of things.
Now: Mike's point about "what goes into a synthesiser", etc. The
MicroWave (and the Prophet VS, the MKS-70, etc.) are synthesisers in
the sense that the baby D's, the VFX, the Proteus aren't. Maybe it's a
case of having real filtering or decent modulation facilities or both.
Maybe it is a case of packaging. Even as I like the feel of a VFX
beneath my fingers, it doesn't feel like a real synth in the sense
that the MicroWave does. The very knowledge that I'm playing back
other people's sample data with some half-hearted filtering and so on
is irritating; it's only the VFX's extensive modulation and wavetable
facilities which make it bearable in that respect.
Is this important? To Mike, yes, I think. (Mike?) To me: well,
yes from the heart, but there are practicalities involved as
well. The VFX has more versatility in a lot of ways, and would
be a lot more use to us than another 2U's rack space of
steaming silicon. And as a compositional tool, it's more useful.
You have to make a choice. If I wanted to make the most
wonderful synthesised sounds I'd buy VS's and MicroWaves.
But, I want to make music, and perhaps this means choosing
a machine in terms of what use I can make of it to that
end rather than whether I could conduct a love affair with it.
But I'm hanging myself here... If I go on too much about how
the MicroWave has loadable wavetables and real filters, then
that's all well and good, but what when something even
better comes along? Isn't it better to find something
that does the job, and the *not* get some inferiority complex
about the fact that someone out there has just bought
a Prophet VS (for a mere $700, curse 'im) which will suddenly
make his music better than mine?
Search your hearts. Do you think things like this too? No?
>Well, no more. I hereby withdraw my objections to FM, and label them past
>history. In fact, I've just gotten a phone call from the guy I'm staying
>with, saying the UPS just delivered the FM synth I've recently
>purchased.
It's a V50 FM workstation, I bet. Built-in effects, auto-chord,
sequencer, drumkit, ... *chortle*.
>I turn to FM as
>it has become passe' after seven years of use in the world music community,
>and in the process it has fallen into the hands of people who want to stretch
>its limits...
I'm not one of them. Like all the other digital wimps out there
(out here?), I'm not too bothered about learning FM because
I've not been convinced that the time and effort would yield
worthwhile results. I've even used the DX7 Tubular Bells
preset on occasion (gasp!), mainly because I haven't got any
decent editing software for the TX on my Mac yet, so altering
anything is a bit of a chore.
>"Don't accept the mumbo-jumbo claims of other manufacturers of so-called
>'Music Workstations!' Only WE give you the power to to free yourself of
>worries about technology and snarls of cables, and get down to what
>REALLY matters: making music. And after all, isn't that what it's all
>about?"
Oh, this looks familiar. Don't tell me, KEYBOARD magazine, March 1990,
pages 1, 3, 4, 5-17 inclusive, ...
Making music is what it's all about. Unfortunately, these ads are
self-contradictory. "Don't worry about the technology. Just make
music. Ok? All you need is OUR NEW BLACK BOX..." and around the
circle we go again...
>metlay
Nick.
--
Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh.
ni...@lfcs.ed.ac.uk <Atlantic Ocean>!mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
A prop? ...or wings? A prop? ...or wings? A prop?
Nick Rothwell
I *still* like my D-110... as a flexible, versatile, sequencing engine,
I don't know of anything better. It does the job, which is what
matters.
I *still* love my D-50... I think you *can* take a set of mediocre
components (digital oscillators, mediocre filters, very nice flexible
chorus units, onboard effects) and put them together in a way which
produces sounds better than you'd expect from hearing the components
in isolation.
I quite like my TX7, since there are tricks you can pull with the
envelopes and velocity sensing which are unique to FM. I have
a nice thunderclap patch as well, which only took me 10 mins to
hack together.
I *love* working with the Mac and Performer, and am quite happy
putting together entire pieces of music without tape.
I might still make the bold move of buying a VFX for its excellent
performance architecture (which will be very useful to us), even
though I consider the MicroWave to be a "truer" synth in the classic
sense, with those wonderful filters. Doing so may break my heart,
though.
Why am I trying to justify myself here? Why not shut up and make the
music instead. Yup, that's the ticket.
"What have you really learned, Dorothy?"
"Well, I've learned that if ever you go to seek out your heart's
desire, you needn't look any further than your own
back yard."
...
"Oh no, I'm a very *good* man, my dear, just a very bad wizard."